Of Logic and Beyond

Some of you will remember that last week, I was determined to teach my wife logic.  This was part of a concerted effort to help her to understand the male mind, which would foster harmony and balance in the relationship, and as other people observed the perfect communication between us, they would seek out the secrets of our enlightened rapport, which would cause a slow but inevitable chain reaction, sweeping across the globe and bringing world peace.

Well, the first logic lesson went poorly.  I started out with a simple little question, a riddle, to expose Ashlei to some of the simple powers of a logical mind, to begin to understand things that to an illogic mind will always seem shrouded in mystery, to whet her appetite for the cold and spartan (yet somehow fulfilling) beauty of always being right about stuff.

Here is the riddle:

A man goes into a bar, has a beer, and says to the bartender, “I bet you can’t guess the ages of my three daughters.”

The bartender says, “Give me a few clues, and I’ll figure it out.”

The man says, “The sum of their ages is eighteen.”

“That’s not enough information.”

“Well, the age of one of them is the number out on the front of your bar.”

The bartender goes out and looks at the front of his bar, and comes back in and says, “Still not enough information.”

The man says, “Okay, my youngest daughter loves chocolate ice cream.”

The bartender says, “Aha,” and tells him the ages of all three daughters.

What are the their ages?

 

We never got past this small introductory riddle.  Ashlei first of all said it was impossible, and then, she said it was stupid, and then she said the drunk guy was stupid, and then she said I was stupid.  After that, logic was not a prominent part of our conversation, and I decided that the second logic lesson would never take place.  All in all, she spent half the time trying to understand me than I spent last year trying to understand her, which makes my position (logically) twice as righteous as hers.

But who’s keeping track?  I want to talk about something else, which is taking walks.

You see, I have two daughters.  They are very different.  Anna is doing the gymnastics thing, twice a week.  She is constantly climbing trees.  Sometimes, when I am doing P90X, she will do it with me.  She is very active.  Abbey is not so much any of that.  She doesn’t do the gymnastics thing.  She doesn’t climb trees.  She sits and watches while I do P90X, but she doesn’t ever like to do active anything.

So last fall, Tuesday and Thursday, when Anna started going to gymnastics, I told Abbey that we were going to take walks.  She was not for the idea.  She wanted to sit around, read a book, watch something on TV, eat some candy, play Sorry, something like that.  But I said no, we were going to take a walk.  I told her why, too.  I told her that she didn’t get enough exercise, and she was going to get some while Anna was at gymnastics.

Finally she said okay, got her shoes on, and off we went.  We live in a pleasant neighborhood.  There are sidewalks, and lots of grass and trees, not many cars, and it’s a great neighborhood for a walk.  She held my hand the entire time.  She asked me to carry her several times, but I said no.

And she talked the entire time.  I didn’t have to respond very often, although occasionally she asked me a question.  No, mostly, she was talking.

Four months have passed. We’ve taken walks when it was eighty degrees and sunny at 5:30 in the evening, and then in December, we’ve taken walks when it was twenty degrees and the stars were out at 5:30 in the evening.  We’ve stared at certain trees, we’ve gone down into a certain little gully full of autumn leaves and thrown them into the air.  We’ve talked to people; Abbey talks to everybody.  We’ve tasted the grass because that’s what cows eat.  We’ve jumped over the cracks in the sidewalk.  We’ve laughed and laughed about things that weren’t so very funny.  We’ve watched the fog of our breath.  We’ve blown dandelion seed heads and watched the seeds float on the wind, and we’ve eaten yellow dandelion flowers.  We’ve looked at bunnies, and we’ve watched them run away from us.  We’ve stopped at certain houses and stared at Christmas decorations.  We’ve stomped on mole tunnels.  We’ve counted bird’s nests in the bare trees.  I’ve gone many miles while she patters along beside me, talking almost the entire time.

There is one house with a statue of a girl in the front yard.  It’s about four feet high, one of those stylized Greek looking things with flowing robes.  It is made out of concrete.  Abbey loves this statue, and we always stop so that she can give the girl a hug.  “I love you, statue,” she says, every time.

The new year comes.  We come back from visiting Ashlei’s family, and settle back into our routines.  Anna goes off to gymnastics, and Abbey goes and gets dressed and off we go.  She still doesn’t like walks–she tells me this before we go–but what I notice most is that she submits, and her attitude brightens, and the world is thus a pleasant place for her.

We will come back to the house, and she’ll stand close to me while I make dinner, or she’ll sit next to me while I read, or I’ll go outside and sit on the back deck, and she’ll come out and say, “Daddy, I want to sit on your lap.”

I’ll say okay, and she flops onto me–Abbey is never graceful–and then she grabs my hands and pulls them across and over until I am holding her, and the weight of her body rises as I breathe.  She will then, occasionally, fall silent.

But not for long.

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